It’s crunch time for the USWNT coaching staff
With the games out of the way, it’s officially decision time for the U.S. women’s national team.
Tuesday’s 1-0 win over Ireland marked the USWNT’s final friendly before the team announces its 23-player roster for the 2023 World Cup, with the team’s next match — a July 9 clash with Wales in San Jose — coming after their tournament squad has been announced.
Head coach Vlatko Andonovski said before and after Tuesday’s game that this second match against Ireland had been earmarked as a chance for several players to bolster their resumes.
“It wasn’t about the team concept [tonight]. It wasn’t about us as a team. It was more about the individual players and obviously getting minutes to certain players,” Andonovski told reporters following a gritty win settled by Alana Cook’s long-range delivery into the box gliding all the way into the goal just before halftime.
“The things that were missing is not something that worries me. Like I said, it was missing cohesion,” said Andonovski after deploying a significantly less familiar starting eleven than the starter-heavy group that won 2-0 in Austin on Saturday. “It was missing understanding between the players, and we’re not surprised by that, because we knew the miscommunication will happen, or missed pass[es] happen, or a player makes a run and doesn’t get the ball, or makes a run to the left and gets the ball to the right. It’s something that we expect to happen, and it did make the game go a little bit wild at times, because we gave up the ball too quick after we won it.”
Andonovski said that if he had to, he could pick his list of 23 players for the World Cup right now, but added that there’s still time for players to use their club play to change the equation.
That said, spots are apparently extremely limited.
“I feel pretty comfortable [with] where we’re at as a team, and from the decision-making standpoint, there’s a group of players that we’re very comfortable with,” said Andonovski. “We can make [a] decision tonight, but also there’s a group of players that we’re comfortable where they’re at, but they’re still gonna have to fight, and not necessarily fight for [one] spot. It’s now a ‘game on.’ We have about maybe 10-to-12 players that are fighting for six, seven spots.”
Returning vets, plus Thompson’s moment
In St. Louis, Andonovski’s selection included Cook, Casey Murphy, Sofia Huerta, Kelley O’Hara, and Alyssa Thompson from the start. A planned substitution saw Tierna Davidson replace Becky Sauerbrunn in the 29th minute, while Casey Krueger split the 90 minutes with O’Hara evenly at left back.
“We wanted to see the players that haven’t been in the environment for a long time. It’s not just we wanted to see them, but we also wanted to give them minutes so, if and when some of them make the World Cup, their first minutes [back] are not in the World Cup, but they have a chance to compete before they go there,” reasoned Andonovski before naming Tierna Davidson, Casey Kruger, Julie Ertz, and O’Hara as players that specifically applied to.
“There are several players that that we wanted to evaluate, but also we wanted to give them minutes to get some of that rust off,” said the fourth-year USWNT manager. “That’s why it was hard to evaluate the team and team performance in a setting like that, when there are a lot of changes, players that haven’t played together in over a year, year and a half, and players that haven’t even played at all in a year and a half.”
On the other hand, Thompson was a late addition to the squad after Mallory Swanson’s knee injury, and was making just her second international appearance. For Andonovski, there was an element of fairness at play, as the other candidates for the wide attacking roles in the USWNT pool have all had at least one start to work with in recent times.
“We wanted to explore every possible option before we make the final decision and one of those was Alyssa Thompson,” Andonovski said of sorting out his front line after losing an undisputed key part of it. “Before [Swanson’s injury], our forwards have had a chance to start in different games, from Trinity [Rodman] to Lynn [Williams], Midge [Purce], [Megan Rapinone], every wide forward had an opportunity to start a game. We felt like we needed to see Alyssa start a game and give her a chance to showcase her abilities as well.”
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